I love it when I come across a new phrase or term and realise that it not only applies directly to me, but I have been an active participant, practitioner and propagator of phenomenons without even really realising it. I can be prone to just jump in spontaneously and don’t realise that I am just jumping on another bandwagon! I am but a ploy of the marketing gurus that live above me! My little path I think I am marking out may indeed be more dictated to me by a facebook algorithm (all because I clicked on an ad for Vanuatu or worse still, massage guns!)
The ‘Wellness Industry’ has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past decade and apparently the 2010’s were all about moving the wellness industry out of the crystal shops and into the mainstream! Who would have thought that my meandering amongst ‘alternative crystals’ in Newtown were actually leading me to a place entrenched in the mainstream??? I knew I should never have listened to that psychic in North Queensland who told me to beware the well endowed red headed woman with a big voice - that she would be my undoing!! But am I just an easily manipulated practitioner, led by the mainstream advertising agents and marketing gurus in silver suits and ray bans? Perhaps not, but the rise of ‘wellness’ and our desire to be more focused on our better selves is perhaps more reflective of a general trend amongst the population rather than just being a result of marketing agencies and celebrity endorsements.
The Wellness Industry ‘encompasses all activities which promote physical and mental wellbeing’ Turns out I am just another yoga loving wannabe nutrionist who likes a little personal grooming, the occasional visit to the man spa for some waxing, a clicker of images of impossibly trim persons in skimpy clothing, massage retreats on holidays, meditations in the form of self time and likes to think of my workplace as a sanctuary or spring of well meaning invigoration. Or in other words - yoga, healthy eating, personal care and beauty, nutrition and weight-loss, meditation, spa retreats, workplace wellness and wellness tourism - basically anything to do with taking care of the self.
The global BOOM of the wellness industry is cited as one of the big growing industries in the last decade and is now worth more than 4.2 trillion Dollars (according to the Global Wellness Institute). The Industry has been steadily growing since 2015 with a 6.4% increase annually to 2017 (*Global Wellness Institute) with Wellness Expenditure being more than half of global Medical Expenditure. In particular the SPA industry($119 billion), Wellness Tourism $639 billion) and Wellness Real Estate ($134 billion) were the big growth sectors.
So why do we want to be more concerned about our wellness? It would appear that in our current awareness, wellness and our ability to take care of ourselves has become a primary concern for more individuals. Wellness no longer just exists in your gym membership. As we find challenges in our growing technological world, it would appear that we are turning inward and starting to focus more on meaning and purpose in our lives and this is in turn leading us to be more aware of the quality of life and endeavours that we are undertaking. There is a greater awareness of our wellbeing now brought heavily to light due to our awareness of chronic diseases and conditions that may have experienced an upswing in the past decade. We have all been made more aware of gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, wheat and nut allergies and a myriad of other conditions loosely banded together under IBS and ‘syndromes’.
So if we are all investing in wellness, why are we experiencing an increase in these digestive and intestinal issues? Sean O’Connor from the Sydney University cites the reasoning could be that we are now more aware of these cases than ever before. In previous instances, it is very possible that people with lactose intolerance just never bothered to let anyone know that they were suffering. Likewise issues such as Coeliac disease and even conditions such as Crohn’s disease are now much more understood and we are more aware of their implications and impact.
So it would appear that we are more aware of our health now than ever before. The possible indicators of health issues creates an awareness of our well being the light of the rising figures of obesity, intolerance, digestive issues and chronic disease in general. This could be contributing to our search and concern for being more well and investing in our own good health.
Other more relevant factors push towards our increasingly active and technologically advanced lifestyle. There are many studies (incl Dr Gini Harrison and Dr Mathijs Lucassen at the Open University in the UK) that suggest technology is creating more anxiety in our life. We can all experience that when we displace or temporarily misplace our phones! The stress over not being able to to perform basic tasks such as ‘tap and go’, searching for a location, connectedness - this all creates a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and an anxiety of not being at the precipice of connection, contactability and ease of function. In short, we have become very dependent on technology to make our lifestyle function… we are dependant = as much as an addict is dependant on the next hit.
This has created an anxiety in our lifestyles that has seen us turn inwards and start to look more for internal meaning and purpose in more areas of our life, not only our workplace but in our daily interactions. We have become so much more focussed on what our lives are contributing to than the mere daily drudgery of completing a days work and feeling satisfied.
Despite the awareness of exercise and mobility and active lifestyles, our environments are still geared towards a sedentary nature. As much as we all harken to our exercise regimes and pay our fortnightly gym memberships, the truth is that the majority of our western society and fellow community members are still highly sedentary in their approach to life. How many times I hear this when I ask clients about their exercise regime, movement practice or daily exercise… there are many of us who don’t have a moving ‘practice’ in our lives. We sit (or stand) at desks all day long and think that a walk is enough to contribute to a daily movement practice. We don’t jog to work, we don’t hunt our dinner, we don’t tend our gardens… we are passive in the world in which we live.
Activity contributes to our physical longevity and our daily wellbeing as when we are actively engaged in our lifestyle it has a whole secondary effect of stimulating enzymes, neurotransmitters and electrons that create healthy well balanced individuals. It can come down to choices that we make where we don’t even think of it. Simply choosing to drive the car to the grocery store as opposed to walking and then choosing to walk back with shopping. Think of how many times you have opted for Uber Eats as opposed to walking to the take away joint for your evening meal?
Which in turn brings us to our dietary habits. In the western world, our diets are still highly processed and more affordable in take away form than when we are preparing and cooking our own meals. It is economically viable to purchase pre-prepared or take away meals than it is to purchase and cook your own meals. Australian health.gov.au websites already warn agains the over reliance on take away and pre prepared meals, citing low nutrient and fibre content as a warning against reliance on this dietary intake. Independent studies such as those undertaken by the Maastricht University in the Netherlands support that our nutritional ingestion can be diversely affected by consumption of pre prepared meals. Many of us know this but it seems the message still fails to get through to certain pockets of our communities. The education of the whole population still needs addressing.
So is it any wonder that we are turning to wellness to ensure that we have a better crack at life? Our sensitivity to maintaining a standard of living that equates to good health, free from disease and illness and issues that might come about from bad choices and improper lifestyle options is very much of paramount importance to those of us living in first world countries. The search for anything that gives us a crack at better health and a more ‘complete’ life is a even more of a holy grail now. We want to be well. We want to be healthy. We want to avoid disease and stress. And we are willing to part with our hard earned cash to be a part of it.
In this way, those of us involved in the wellness industry have a huge responsibility to be as informed as possible as to how we promote, understand and prescribe to our clients, the best way forward and how to create the best version of ourselves. It’s a huge undertaking and as more and more people become invested in the industry and more money is launched towards it, inevitably it is going to bring with it those who seek to take advantage of these trends and manipulate us into believing that the bottle they are selling is the new best thing for us. There is a lot of fake claims out there and a lot of fake information that has to be taken into account. Not all of the trends and information that comes to light is of the right variety (thinking of bee stings as a medicinal application) but we are certainly moving in a general direction that has us investigating more and more what the best wellness for ourselves is. It’s always going to be a hotly debated subject and at times may become controversial, but the mere investigation into the whats, whys and wherefores is a worthy path to follow as we take more control of our own wellness and longevity.
wellness is a journey, not a destination, so we don't need to get it right, right away.
